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Measuring the economic impact of climate-induced environmental changes on sun-and-beach tourism

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Abstract

Despite the economic importance of the tourism sector and its close relationship to the environment and climate, substantial gaps remain in the investigation of climate change (CC) impacts on tourism. Unlike the increasing body of literature focusing on the variation in the climatic suitability of tourism destinations, this paper focuses on the impacts of CC on the provision of natural resources affecting the attractiveness of destinations. More specifically, the paper provides an economic measurement of climate-induced environmental changes on the coast of Mallorca (Spain), one of the Mediterranean’s leading sun-and-beach destinations. A choice experiment is used to elicit the willingness to pay (WTP) of tourists for the introduction of policies aimed at reducing three climate-induced environmental changes. The estimated results show the positive WTP of tourists to reduce CC impacts and provide evidence of preference heterogeneity among individuals with different socioeconomic and travel characteristics.

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Notes

  1. Enríquez et al. (2017) use SWAN (Simulating WAves Nearshore) and SWASH (Simulating WAves till SHore) numerical models (Booij et al. 1999; Zijlema et al. 2011) to project the shoreline retreat in Mallorca.

  2. The CIESM JellyWatch Program is devoted to monitoring jellyfish blooms along the Mediterranean coasts and in the open sea and provides an interactive map of the blooms that can be consulted at http://www.ciesm.org/gis/JW/build/JellyBlooms.php (accessed on July 23, 2018).

  3. Changes in the frequency of jellyfish blooms have been studied by using temporal series of observed jellyfish densities, showing positive trends of blooms in native and invasive species in the Mediterranean. For more details, see Purcell et al. (2007), Kogovšek et al. (2010) and Brotz and Pauly (2012).

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Funding

This work is supported by the CLIMPACT project (CGL2014-54246-C2-1-R) funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy. Alejandra R. Enríquez acknowledges an FPI grant associated with the CLIMPACT project.

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  1. IMEDEA (UIB-CSIC), Esporles, Balearic Islands, Spain

    Alejandra R. Enríquez

  2. Department of Applied Economics, University of the Balearic Islands, Palma, Balearic Islands, Spain

    Angel Bujosa Bestard

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  1. Alejandra R. Enríquez
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  2. Angel Bujosa Bestard
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Correspondence to Alejandra R. Enríquez or Angel Bujosa Bestard.

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Enríquez, A.R., Bujosa Bestard, A. Measuring the economic impact of climate-induced environmental changes on sun-and-beach tourism. Climatic Change 160, 203–217 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-020-02682-w

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